Palazzo Celestino Piva

A historic palace on Via Piva holds Valdobbiadene's cultural daily life: the Pietro Ghisalberti municipal library, settled here since 1974, an auditorium for town events, and an unusual sundial collection that grew out of a national gnomonics seminar. It is the indoor complement to the vineyard landscape outside.

Why it matters

The Municipality's own register of places identifies Palazzo Celestino Piva as the seat of the Biblioteca Comunale "Pietro Ghisalberti", the town's public library, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2024 — an institution dating to 1974. Beyond the library, the palace has an auditorium for civic and cultural events.

What to notice

The Sala della Gnomonica, opened in 2024, is dedicated to the study of sundials. It grew from the twenty-first national gnomonics seminar held at the palazzo in 2017 and is dedicated to abbot Giovanni Follador (1785–1858), a professor of mathematics and mechanics at the Padua seminary. The room contains specialist books and historical and modern solar instruments donated by collectors. The palazzo also keeps the connection to the town's most public sundial: the one painted high on the Duomo's bell tower nearby, which abbot Follador himself realized in the nineteenth century, which the First World War destroyed, and which a new calculation restored to the wall in 1998.

Context and history

The palace carries the name of the Piva family, whose memory remains in the street itself — Via Piva, on which both the palazzo and the Duomo's parish address stand. Its documented public chapter begins with the library's establishment in 1974 and its installation here; the Comune's place register now records the building essentially through this cultural function. Over five decades the institution grew from a book collection into a multi-room civic centre with reading rooms, a children's section, an auditorium and a gnomonics hall.